A Baby Between Them

It was on the tip of her tongue to add, I need to get away from you most of all! Instead she said, “I remember how to drive. The town didn’t look that big yesterday—I can make my way.”

She stopped talking because he’d put on his jacket and held the keys in his fist. “No, Eleanor, you will not drive yourself around with a head injury. I’ll take you wherever you want to go. Besides, mine is the only name on the rental. You’re not insured.”

“Then I’ll walk.”

“Don’t be absurd.”

And because her head throbbed and her stomach roiled, she opened the door and left the room, Carl close on her heels.

It was a drizzly day outside. As Carl went to the front desk, she perused the lobby. Several people were standing or sitting in chairs in front of a big, hooded fireplace. She longed to be one of them, longed to go stand by the fire without Carl hovering nearby.

Her gaze met the gray eyes of a man in his thirties. He was tall and solid-looking, wearing boots, jeans and a black sweater. His hair was dark and thick, combed away from his face. His features were attractive, his mouth perfectly formed, but it was the intensity of his gaze that held her, that sent her left hand up to her cheek. His gaze grew even more piercing and a trill of excitement sputtered along her skin.

She looked away at once, but for some reason looked back. He had turned to stare at the fire.

“Ready?” Carl asked.

She startled.

“The clerk at the desk told me there’s a nice clothing store less than a mile from here. Come on.”

SIMON WAITED UNTIL HE SAW the taillights go on in their car before he left the building and ran to his truck. Within a few moments he’d caught up with them on the main drag.

A brisk, overcast Tuesday morning in April wasn’t exactly high tourist time, he discovered, and wished there were a few more cars around. He’d already announced himself by allowing Ella to notice him staring at her. He couldn’t afford another sighting.

But he hadn’t been able to take his eyes off her. Her hair was short and dark, a fringe of bangs somewhat obscuring bruises and a bandage, framing her deep blue eyes. She’d looked wistful, vulnerable in a way he’d seen her look so few times. He’d wanted to walk up to her, talk with her, see if she knew who he was, ask her to explain what was happening.

Of course, he hadn’t, and when she’d raised her hand to her face in an almost shy gesture, he finally noticed the sparkle of gold on her finger.

She wore a wedding ring. And the man who had come up to her wore one, too. A tall man with long fair hair, chiseled features and a hustler’s tilt to his head.

Damn.

Simon hung back a block until he saw the turn signal on the rental. By the time he turned the same corner, the man was helping Ella out of the car. Simon pulled up to the curb half a block away and watched as they entered a building.

The man. Ella’s husband. Carl Baxter. Call him what he was. But why had Ella dyed her hair? She had to have done it before the accident; surely she wouldn’t use dye with scratches and wounds on her head, but again, why? Her hair was a source of pride for her, at least it had been, so why whack it off unless to disguise herself?

After getting rid of you, maybe she just wanted a change, an inner voice suggested.

Simon pulled his sweater over his head and put on the denim jacket he kept in the backseat, then snatched a green baseball cap out of a side pocket. As disguises went, it wasn’t great, but it was as good as he could do without risking losing them, and he wasn’t going to chance that. He darted across the street.

The inside of the store wasn’t exactly booming with customers, but it was jammed with racks of clothes that seemed to go from floor to ceiling. The clutter made lurking a little safer. He’d just make sure they were in here to actually look at clothes, and then he’d leave and stake out the exterior.

Cap pulled low on his forehead, he caught sight of Ella fingering a rack of blue-green sweaters. It was his favorite color on her.

She took one of the sweaters off the rack and held it up against her supple body, the soft material at once clinging to her breasts and evoking a million erotic memories. It was a long garment and as she turned to look at herself in the mirror, he felt his breath catch in his throat. The night they first met came stampeding into his head and heart like a locomotive off its tracks.

Carl Baxter chose that moment to take the blue sweater from her hands and thrust a yellow one at her.

Simon immediately turned around and left the store, retracing his steps to the truck, where he took out his cell phone. He made two calls. One to work to request a few days’ vacation and the other to an old friend. Then he hunkered down to wait.

“YOU LOOK BEAUTIFUL,” Carl said, placing his hands on her shoulders and leaning down to kiss the nape of her neck. He was standing behind her as she faced the mirror, trying to arrange her hair to hide her abrasions and bandages.

She didn’t really like the look of the yellow against her skin, and Carl’s lips left her cold, which made her ashamed of herself. As he raised his head and their gazes locked in the reflection of the mirror, she said, “Do we have a good marriage, Carl?”

He smiled. “Of course we have a good marriage.”

“Then why won’t you tell me about it? You know, about one of our days, maybe. A Saturday, for instance. Tell me what we do on a Saturday when I don’t have to go to work at the…”

He laughed. “Trying to trick me into telling you what you do for a living?”

“Can’t you just throw me a bone? What do you do for a living?”

“Why this preoccupation with jobs?”

“I don’t know, I just feel so lost waiting around, I want to do something. I want to know what I used to do, what we did as a couple.”

He moved away toward the door. “Let’s go.”

“Carl—”

“You haven’t eaten all day. You must be starving.”

“But the reservation—”

“Is for an hour from now, I know, but they serve wine and cheese before dinner in the lobby. A little wine will do you good.”

“With my head injury?” she said.

“One glass won’t hurt.”

There was just no point in arguing with him. The man never said or did one thing he didn’t want to say or do, seldom let her out of his sight. We better have a good marriage, she thought as she walked past him into the hall, because if we don’t, I’m going to divorce him when I get my memory back.

Though she would hardly admit it to herself, there was someone she was hoping to see again and that was the man from the morning. He wasn’t in the lobby, however. She took a seat near the fire, the gray late-afternoon skies pressing against the tall windows at her back. Carl walked over to the informal buffet as she looked around the spacious room, glancing at the half dozen other guests sipping wine and laughing.

What would it be like to laugh? Did she laugh a lot? Was she morose or happy or contemplative?

One thing Carl was right about was the return of her appetite. It was back with a vengeance, and as she accepted a small plate covered with cheese and crackers and grapes, she noticed a tall man walk into the lobby from the outside and veer toward the front desk.

“Wine?” Carl said, and she accepted a glass of chilled white wine and set it on the table next to her plate. He stood by her seat, looking down at her as he sipped a dark red Cabernet and she tried a cracker slathered with creamy Brie. Why didn’t he sit, why did he hover? She looked surreptitiously toward the desk, but the tall man was gone.

It had been the man from the morning, she was sure of it, the one with the gray eyes.

At that moment, a woman approached Carl. “Are you Mr. Baxter?” she asked.

He looked down his long nose at the woman who was wearing a hotel uniform identifying her as an employee. “Yes.”

“Sir, we’ve been alerted your car has two very flat front tires. Would you come with me?”